Twitter has begun rolling-out a photo posting function that allows users of the micro-blogging service to share images without the need for a third-party app such as TwitPic.

Press camera icon to upload images to micro-blogging service

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Twitter has begun rolling-out a photo posting function that allows users of the micro-blogging service to share images without the need for a third-party app such as TwitPic.

To add an image to their Tweet, users simply need to press the camera icon that appears to the left of the Tweet box. This opens Windows explorer box ensuring users can browse their hard drive and select an image to upload.

The pictures are being hosted by Photobucket. Twitter fist revealed in June this year, it was planning to work with the firm to offer photo attachments to tweets directly from the Twitter homepage.

Twitter confirmed its users would still be able to upload images using third-party services such as TwitPic and yFrog. The micro-blogging site also revealed it removes Exif data (information about the image such as date and time it was taken) on upload, so it won't be available to others.

Twitter said images can be removed by deleting the tweet. However, it's worth noting that sometimes a tweet can remain cached in some browsers so is still viewable despite being deleted. The images will also appear in Twitter search results.

In the next few weeks, Twitter also plans to roll out a galleries function that will let users see all, of the images someone has posted. When the photo-posting function will be extended to Twitter's own mobile app remains unknown.